This book discusses state estimation of stochastic dynamic systems from noisy measurements, specifically sequential Bayesian estimation and nonlinear or stochastic filtering. The class of solutions presented in this book is based on the Monte Carlo statistical method. Although the resulting algorithms, known as particle filters, have been around for more than a decade, the recent theoretical developments of sequential Bayesian estimation in the framework of random set theory have provided new opportunities which are not widely known and are covered in this book. This book is ideal for graduate students, researchers, scientists and engineers interested in Bayesian estimation.

The monograph written by John Mullane, Ba-Ngu Vo, Martin Adams and Ba-Tuong Vo is devoted to the field of autonomous robot systems, which have been receiving a great deal of attention by the research community in the latest few years. The contents are focused on the problem of representing the environment and its uncertainty in terms of feature based maps. Random Finite Sets are adopted as the fundamental tool to represent a map, and a general framework is proposed for feature management, data association and state estimation. The approaches are tested in a number of experiments on both ground based and marine based facilities.

This book provides a general introduction to Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods, also known as particle filters. These methods have become a staple for the sequential analysis of data in such diverse fields as signal processing, epidemiology, machine learning, population ecology, quantitative finance, and robotics. The coverage is comprehensive, ranging from the underlying theory to computational implementation, methodology, and diverse applications in various areas of science. This is achieved by describing SMC algorithms as particular cases of a general framework, which involves concepts such as Feynman-Kac distributions, and tools such as importance sampling and resampling. This general framework is used consistently throughout the book. Extensive coverage is provided on sequential learning (filtering, smoothing) of state-space (hidden Markov) models, as this remains an important application of SMC methods. More recent applications, such as parameter estimation of these models (through e.g. particle Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques) and the simulation of challenging probability distributions (in e.g. Bayesian inference or rare-event problems), are also discussed. The book may be used either as a graduate text on Sequential Monte Carlo methods and state-space modeling, or as a general reference work on the area. Each chapter includes a set of exercises for self-study, a comprehensive bibliography, and a “Python corner,” which discusses the practical implementation of the methods covered. In addition, the book comes with an open source Python library, which implements all the algorithms described in the book, and contains all the programs that were used to perform the numerical experiments.

This book contains two review articles on nonlinear data assimilation that deal with closely related topics but were written and can be read independently. Both contributions focus on so-called particle filters. The first contribution by Jan van Leeuwen focuses on the potential of proposal densities. It discusses the issues with present-day particle filters and explorers new ideas for proposal densities to solve them, converging to particle filters that work well in systems of any dimension, closing the contribution with a high-dimensional example. The second contribution by Cheng and Reich discusses a unified framework for ensemble-transform particle filters. This allows one to bridge successful ensemble Kalman filters with fully nonlinear particle filters, and allows a proper introduction of localization in particle filters, which has been lacking up to now.

This text takes readers in a clear and progressive format from simple to recent and advanced topics in pure and applied probability such as contraction and annealed properties of non-linear semi-groups, functional entropy inequalities, empirical process convergence, increasing propagations of chaos, central limit, and Berry Esseen type theorems as well as large deviation principles for strong topologies on path-distribution spaces. Topics also include a body of powerful branching and interacting particle methods.

A unified Bayesian treatment of the state-of-the-art filtering, smoothing, and parameter estimation algorithms for non-linear state space models.

Monte Carlo methods are revolutionizing the on-line analysis of data in many fileds. They have made it possible to solve numerically many complex, non-standard problems that were previously intractable. This book presents the first comprehensive treatment of these techniques.